3,214 Quotes About Food

An outstanding historical feature of the pie is that it is a self-contained meal which can be eaten in the hand, without the need of cutlery, crockery or napery.

When Soyer said of pies that they are 'one of our best companions du voyage through life', he was referring consumers, but he might just as well been referring to his professional colleagues, for pies have always been enormously useful to caterers and cooks, particularly at events where a large number must be fed efficiently. In modern times this is usually at sporting events such as football games, but the original experts in mass catering were the military.

At a simple biological level, before dietitians were invented, our noses decided what was best to eat: if it smelled good, it was almost certainly good to eat.

We are social animals, and we don't usually find and eat food alone, so we associate it at an emotional level with people, events and circumstances. Eventually a food becomes embedded with meaning, allowing anthropologists to asks questions like: 'Do pies mean anything?

It is the food that looks backwards through our shared family memories. It is comfort food, the food inextricably linked in our cultural consciousness with motherhood and nationhood. Even though the pies are no longer a daily item on our dinner tables, they still figure large in many of our memories: pies mean Thanksgiving and Christmas and picnics and silly old Aunt Mabel and going to the football with Dad.

When the pies were taken out of the oven, melted fat was poured in through a hole in the lid to exclude air, thus preserving the contents. Once the pie was cut this airtight seal was broken, leaving the contents prone to rapid spoilage - which perhaps gave rise to the old superstition that it is unlucky to take just one slice from a pie.

Fruit pies started to come into their own during the sixteenth century as sugar became cheaper and more delicate forms of pastry were available.

Orengeado is candied orange peel, and it was enormously popular from Elizabethan times until well into the eighteenth century. A pie made from orengeado, perhaps layered with apples, was a very expensive delicacy.

Dessert pies have moved well beyond fruit and custard, and the line is blurred between pies and cakes with some pies resembling cakes with a crust (pecan pie springs to mind). Some sweet pies are even made with vegetables.